It also states support for Flash 9 swfs. Previously Director 11 did not work well/atall with AS3/Flash 9 swfs which made it nearly useless.

Streaming support for audio and video with RTMP (red5, flash media server, etc)

Updated video support

Bitmap and audio filters for video

I still think Director is on decline unless they open up the development platform, lose Lingo and allow a real IDE to develop with. So frustrating being restrained to that IDE that is not very flexible and cumbersome to extend and code in when you compare it with cutting edge IDEs like Unity3D or open source flash IDEs like FlashDevelop. It has been completely removed from our workflow for some time due to new Flash 2.5D engines such as papervision 3d, away 3d and sandy or for more immersive hardware rendered 3d, unity3d.

Adobe Director version comparison chart

Product features

Director 11.5

Director 11

Director MX 2004

Support for 5.1 surround sound

Yes

No

No

Real-time audio mixing

Yes

No

No

Audio effects and DSP filters

Yes

No

No

H.264 MPEG-4, FLV, and F4V video support

Yes

No

No

Streaming support for audio and video with RTMP

Yes

No

No

Ability to apply audio filters on a video

Yes

No

No

Ability to apply bitmap filters on a video

Yes

No

No

Google SketchUp file import

Yes

No

No

Enhanced physics engine with support for dynamic concave rigid bodies

Yes

No

No

ByteArray datatype for binary data handling

Yes

No

No

Multiple undo/redo for text editors

Yes

No

No

Text rendering and performance optimization

Yes

No

No

Cross-domain policy support for Adobe Shockwave® Player

Yes

No

No

Mac OS X Leopard support

Yes

No

No

Unicode support

Yes

Yes

No

Microsoft DirectX 9 support

Yes

Yes

No

Advanced physics engine with included NVIDIA® PhysX™ support

Yes

Yes

No

JavaScript dictionary

Yes

Yes

No

Code snippets

Yes

Yes

No

Bitmap filters

Yes

Yes

No

Microsoft® Windows Vista® support

Yes

Yes

No

Support for Intel® based Macs

Yes

Yes

No

Cross-platform projector publishing

Yes

Yes

Yes

Web publishing with Adobe Shockwave Player

Yes

Yes

Yes

Support for more than 40 video, audio, and image file formats, including SWF

I have been consuming all the great additions to Flash 10 this weekend and one that really jumps out after you get past the visual, text and sound features (which are spectacular btw and most of what the community was asking for). But one feature snuck by, this is the one that ByteArray (Thibault Imbert) mentions/pointed out for managing files directly within Flash.

File Reference runtime access— Bring users into the experience by letting them load files into your RIA. You can work with the content at runtime and even save it back when you are done through the browse dialog box. Files can be accessed as a byteArray or text using a convenient API in ActionScript without round-tripping to the server. You no longer have to know a server language or have access to a server to load or save files at runtime.

This greatly lowers the bar to using Flash as a photo editor, document manager, customized application experiences, marking up content and saving locally, all without the need for server side script. I am a big fan of server side technologies and develop with them but even for bettering performance this could be huge.

Scenarios where this might be useful is editing applications, note taking (download a book with your notes), editors for docs/games/3d/textures,,, the possibilities are endless really.

Flash 9 just got mainstream and production ready (flash 9 penetration) at the tail end of last year but there are so many great things in the new version that I hope it comes out very soon. Flash it turning into quite a platform.

It is only beta (Flash 10) but there are great market opportunities to prepare for when this launches. Keep your eye on where the puck will be, not where it is currently at. I was concerned when Adobe bought Macromedia and the future of Flash but it appears they are taking this bull by the horns.

If you are ready to play with Flash 10 here is Flex and FlashDevelop updates to help you get started.

Also here is some code posted at ByteArray from Pleh for testing the new FileReference runtime access, usage is extremely simple and rests on this

*drawlogic is authored by Ryan Christensen of *drawlabs and *drawcode, both dedicated to taking ideas to ship doing entertainment focused web, mobile and desktop game and interactive development projects.